A COVENTRY consultant is saying goodbye to the hospital he has served for three decades.

Ron Parker, general surgeon and leader of a national pilot scheme to screen for bowel cancer, is retiring.

His last official day at the city's Walsgrave Hospital is October 15 but friends and colleagues had a chance to say their farewells at a party last week.

Mr Parker, aged 64, will carry on as the head of the screening programme which is on trial in Coventry and Warwickshire. He will also carry out some private practice work but is stepping down from the NHS.

He said: "I have a great affection for the people at Walsgrave. It is great to have been part of an institution where there is a super team doing a super job."

The surgeon, who has specialised in colorectal operations, took an interest in medicine at an early age following a rough-and-tumble childhood.

He said: "I was bought up in Liverpool on a council estate. It was a very rough area. Lots of children from the docks had been evacuated because it was wartime and I went to school with some very tough kids.

"I was actually the best wrestler in the school. I heard the best fighter is in prison for murder.

He added: "A friend was going into medicine and I thought it was a good idea so I changed my A-levels.

"But then I got called up for National Service and went into the RAF for two years and actually wondered whether I wanted to spend five or six years training to be a doctor."

Nevertheless, his calling persisted and he trained at the University of Birmingham medical school.

One of his rotations for surgical training involved him coming to Coventry and his link with the city began.

He worked as a registrar at Walsgrave and was taken on as a consultant in 1975 to replace Lionel Jones, the doctor he had trained with and who introduced him to bowel surgery.

He realises the hospital and the trust is going through a turbulent period but remains positive about its future.

"There are never the resources to do everything that we want to do when we want to do it.

"Generally speaking, the trust has a great team and I think it is a really exciting time, with the teaching hospital and the PFI bid.

"I'm sure Walsgrave and the services of the trust will move forward and I think it will have a great future."

Among the leaving gifts presented to Mr Parker at his farewell bash were two telescopic climbing poles, a power drill and set of Edinburgh crystal glassware.

He'll be using the poles next year during a planned climb of Kilimanjaro and the drill will be a useful tool in his aim to build a new stable at his home in Crick.